welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour the

crisis in japan is hitting home in a major way the dow jones stumped the session plummeting to one hundred fifty points so what's next for the global economic climate and think the u.s. is immune to nuclear disaster we pinpoint the hotspots of plants across the country warning one may be located in your backyard but first. here on the way in our face risks of nuclear meltdown another devastating consequences the apocalyptic quake and tsunami in japan what are some of the other global effects of this catastrophe both the u.s. and japanese stock markets have taken to the last few days over concerns that one of the wealthiest nations on the planet and a major supplier of technology around the world could suffer a nuclear meltdown so what are some of the unforeseen economic consequences of

a cripple japan here to shed light on this issue from tokyo economics writer and author of the book in the jaws of the dragon one of my absolute favorites amun fingleton and welcome. thank you tom to most to be with you great to have you our first of all you're in tokyo how is life different there since the quake. well there's been a lot of take of the consumer level people rushing to the supermarkets clearing the shelves you go there to the supermarket sit anywhere around basically and there's nothing left bread as soon as it's big it's off the shelves it's amazing. how is the japanese government and the japanese media handling what's going on at the fukushima daiichi plant well it's nonstop coverage on television and. newspapers are full of. pages and pages and pages of stuff. so

certainly it's becoming very good but there's a certain panic here and. when i saw the emperor go on television yesterday i thought well. this is interesting. he was of course the. story was a big tim's in the north. and families have lost people but i think the subtext of that was that here i am in my palace in tokyo i'm not taking a crystal you know please you know don't panic everything's going to be all right about this nuclear situation yeah although i was reading today and i was the financial times that every that the bankers literally was just the banks to have chartered all the private planes out of out of tokyo it's just incredible anyhow you've done extensive work on both china and japan's role in the global economy how significant of an impact will this disaster have on the rest of the world's economy

and why and how. i think the impact will be considerable the thing that people don't fully understand in the west is that japan these days because of the development of technology has lots and lots of nice products where it is a monopoly supplier and oligopoly supplier and factories producing these things have been knocked out by the earthquake then there will be shortages there will have knock on effects right around the world small things. certain materials lots and lots of materials monopolized by japan and a very. good component subcomponents sub sub components. key machines so on japan is dominant or monopoly supplier and of these things are not available just stops. the implications for korea from china to the united states also will feel is what you're talking about there for example if

i'm looking at a computer or a cell phone or a smartphone or something like that that while it may say made in china and many of the parts were manufactured in china or in south korea and it was really assembled in china that there may be even just one little key component that was made by this one unique factory in japan that's the only place on earth that makes it and because of the like you know it's the classic because of the lack of a horseshoe the battle was lost situation. absolutely and japan is a much bigger player in the mobile phones than china is china simply does the. final assembly if you look down into the auction process there's japan probably has forty or fifty percent of the total added value in the mobile phone it's making the materials something like silicon for silicon chips is monopolized by japan there are two companies here that produce essentially all the world's supply. i. and

that's just one of cereal there are dozens cereals that are crucial in that industry the earthquake is over the tsunami has gone i realize there are continuing aftershocks. how long will it take before these factories come back on line i mean is it just a matter of putting stuff back on shelves and maybe reinforcing walls or is there a problem that has to do with the electricity situation right now because some of these nuclear power plants are shut down and the loss of daiichi and what not there is is making a fashion difficult what is. the there are two distinct problems one is the logistical osho chair. gasoline. distribution problems and then there is the larger problem which will take much longer to sort out which is damage to factories from the tsunami and from the

earthquake and also there's these exclusion zone around the fukushima plant there's some i know that nissan has a. engine factory very close to that plant so that there will be a long term hit to the fraction of supplies that will last for two three four months something like that do you think it's possible the this that this loss of these japanese components could awaken americans to the downside of globalization the things that you talk about in your book in the jaws of the dragon and that we don't make anything in america anymore. absolutely i think it will come as quite a shock to people at the moment rightly just concerned about the loss of life and the rescue efforts and the. two weeks of the news will be of. the economic effects of all of this and americans from so many wake up to the fact that

as you say you no longer make anything it's really an amazing story that's lost since in the last twenty years it is that you told a brilliantly in your book in the jaws of the dragon which i want to once again recommend to people and the paycheck at your website and fingleton from tokyo thank you sir for being with us tonight my pleasure i'll explore another angle of the story in japan internet scaly take. who supports bullying in school republicans after a rash of teen suicides last year as a result of bullying many state and federal lawmakers are promoting legislation against. president obama's even stepped into the fray he said this about the issue at a conference on bullying prevention at the white house last week. even republican governor

chris christie took a break from his union busting to pass an anti bullying law in january but now the anti-gay wing of the republican party very prominently i might add is mobilizing against these laws claiming they're nothing more than insidious tools of the homosexual agenda you know that's repeated quote the executive director of the american principles project and he is heading the pro-ball we movement he said this about the inside bullying legislation. so why is it that the republican party must turn every moral issue into a political one and you conservatives really think that coming out against legislation to prevent teenage suicides would play well with the american people are takers to share her take is to gun laws senior fellow at the conservative independent women's forum julie welcome back thanks for having me on nice to have you with us republicans are anti anti bullying legislation i don't get it but i think for her most people it's not a matter of being anti pulling legislation it's that's not the role of the

governments of the federal government to be putting a blanket over all schools saying all schools need to deal with this some schools may have a problem with bullying a nation perhaps put together an anti bullying program but some schools might not have a problem so it should be left to the local schools and to the parents and the school boards to really make the decision whether there should be a bullying program. suicide is the leading cause of death for children under fourteen. university just published there the medical school just published a study of medicine they looked at thirteen studies done thirteen different countries and concluded that there's a direct correlation between bullying and suicide and and by the way since one thousand nine hundred eighty the rate of teenage suicide in the united states has doubled so isn't this a federal issue i mean if this is nationwide this is happening and this is taking our children. this is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed and it

certainly is something that that schools need to look at i think the question is is each school district is different each school is different and if we're going to make schools if they get federal unison different bullying is something that it does happen it's a terrible thing and nobody you know nobody you know their statistics indicate in the some schools don't have bullying and a little short i think it's a degree to which there's a problem in some schools i'm sure there is a very bad bowling problem but what this what this legislation will do is say each school is the same and every school has to have so if you have a school that has no billion problem and you have a federal law against but when you have no problem it's just like if you've got a federal law against you know heroin and you go to school where there's no heroin there's no problem but this is going to pump a lot of money and said this into these programs federal money is going to be used for this money and we spent there a lot of problems to educate kids ago but we have about as contests and teachers and schools can do that if there is a if there is a problem in

a school district nothing prevents schools from creating these types so in other ways we should take that money and give it is actually should billionaires we should allow we should allow local schools to make the decision whether they want a book and the entire growing program but there are local schools in west virginia mississippi louisiana and texas that have no money they have no resources they are you know to get to quote john boehner broke and and you're saying we maun their own i have to believe the schools have a lot of money and they could take some of their resources to pay for the entire can some of the schools i don't tell metropolitan atlanta schools in detroit schools i work in los angeles there are there are school districts that are i mean you literally got teachers bringing in the newspaper and posed i understand that there are there are very very bad things that happen in the world there are terrible things we spend a ton of federal money on the drug problem in the u.s. there's still drugs we spend time. money trying to look at what silence trying to

prevent around crime there's still gun crime there's still violent crime we spend tons of money on the war and there's little more so so i feel very good maybe we have some areas of agreement but none of those things those are all things that have to do with adults consenting adults or stupid behavior by adults we're talking about a ten year old just to you and protecting our ten year old do you think that school districts have a neighbor decision to do the do you think that this the teachers and the school district officials and the schools care about kids yet and whether they're right and that's why they're making laws saying we couldn't participate in determining if they need to start an anti bullying program they don't need the federal government telling them that they need to do this in their schools if they determine in their school that there's a terrible bullying problem they can stop start an anti bullying program at the local billionaire and say hey can you help us out a little bit teachers can teach kids against you know that bullying is is not a good day parents can teach how to teach are so good forty fifty kids in some of

these classrooms they don't have time to teach you know basic arithmetic they don't have time you know in a fifty minute hour with fifty kids in a class that's one minute per child how. our teachers are overwhelmed in the united states after thirty years of reaganomics and cuts to education but here we might also agree on is that i do think that teachers are overwhelmed and maybe a little bit scared to actually punish kids for this or they're terrified of being sued or or parents being angry at them for teachers. but i think this here i think that teachers are afraid to. acts a little act with a little bit of punishment towards these children you know so well i think kids get thrown out of school they get expelled they get attention they get it there's there's. it's only different than it was thirty forty years ago we've passed laws against against you know if anything in fact we have more kids into in criminal detention now than we used to having in many cases those are coming out of the

school district because the teachers are calling the police and like you i trust the teachers and school administrators and the people that are working hard in these districts schools will look at their schools and want to term and the best option for their students and we'll determine whether they need a bullying program i think that dictating this type of program requiring this type of program and also there are even talk of having principals tech students facebook updates their twitter accounts and you know this is this is it all the way we talk of them but there's no say there's no proposal i mean legislation that i've seen how there's always of your conservative colleagues are saying that somehow this is part of the homosexual agenda you know let's let's teach kids about bullying well i don't i don't know i'm not i'm not sure how they make that connection i assume it's because there is a lot of focus on the homosexual his kids will they do get bullied but you know barack obama talks about growing a black and white school getting bullied yeah i understand that but i think i think

there may be some conservatives that are concerned about the homosexual agenda i think the vast majority of conservatives are concerned about this is yet another example of government overreach this is yet another example of the other any federal going on that we could begin to have a ten dollar bill also also conservatives are concerned how can redefine bullying i mean if. if a chop if one child disagrees with another child is that is disagreement considered bullying is arguing is not the right way of his legislation to put courses into the schools that help kids and teachers under i part i thought teachers were supposed to teach kids how to argue and think critically and teachers need curriculum to do that. this is a curriculum about bowling but if you teach a child to think critically as they're supposed to do in mathematics and reading and writing and all of the aisle the subjects that they take they can carry that over and and realize that having a civil argument that kids will have a civil argument if they learn how to think critically and how to debate so is this

are going to very simple thank you for them and i thank you for having me. the guy at the forefront by the way of the effort and is the same guy who led the boycott at sea-tac where i did my radio show from for a couple of days last month when he realized to go proud a gay conservative group was also invited so for your one stop source of all your hateful and homophobic needs shop republican. coming out think what's happening to japan's nuclear plants can't happen to us i'll give you an interactive look at the potential disaster americans can face in tonight's daily take. let's not forget that we have an apartheid regime right.

i think. either one well. we have the government says to keep him safe get ready for freedom. martin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

it's the good the bad and the very extremely ugly first the good working america as an affiliate of the f l c i o working america the organization is compensating for any casualties of wisconsin governor scott walker's war on unions by signing up

more than twenty thousand and nine union people since last month to contribute money to union coffers people are simply asked to fill out a form online and donate five bucks thanks to groups like work in america republicans attempt to destroy democratic fundraising may be a bit more difficult than the imagine the bad senator jim de mint listen to this little gem of insanity the de mint unleashed yesterday in a radio interview about the relationship between government and guy. was not hit often enough to lead to the bigger the government gets the smaller god gets as people become more dependent on government less dependent on cot and you cannot have a free society that way. last time i checked god and government don't amount to a zero sum gain i'm guessing demand thinks that if we can get rid of government then a massive god is going to defend our nation from enemies educate our children about

history and science make sure our food and water are safe put out house fires and take out the garbage twice and maybe we would have been better off with albert green. and the very very ugly newt gingrich also appearing on a radio show yesterday gingrich touted the success of nafta and when a caller pressed him that america has lost a lot of jobs to mexico as a result of free trade. came back with this winner of a response. that enabled us to build jobs in canada the united states and mexico in competition with china you know r.v. competitors not mexico our big competitors china and india and i'd rather have jobs close to the united states have no jobs overseas in places like china and india. that's a lost job is a lost job no matter where i goes new wake up i don't think it's any consolation that out of work american can actually see his job across the southern border but if that was true then maybe some unemployed americans could head up to sarah palin

secret alaskan lookout post and see their jobs in china too was that russia any way you'd say apathy toward the unemployed it's very very. if this happened here could we handle it depending on which way the wind blows tokyo could be in the path of the radioactive cloud spewing from the current crippled fukushima daiichi nuclear plant with which is about one hundred forty kilometers north of tokyo we're talking about radiation poisoning on an unbelievable scale just at the winds change. the reactors that are on the verge of meltdown in japan are known as mark ones and they were designed by general electric thirty five years ago three g.

engineers resigned in protest because they believed that the market one had critical design flaws that would leave that reactor vulnerable should it cooling system failure occur and as we're all seeing today they were right and for those of you who think what's happening in japan can happen here think again there are twenty three nuclear reactors in operation in the united states right now that use the same mark one design as the ones that are melting down in japan one of those reactors is located right here at the peach bottom atomic power station in pennsylvania it's less than sixty miles west of philadelphia a city with a population of a million and a half people now what's importer remember is that what brought the the daiichi plant to the brink in japan was not the earthquake in the tsunami it was a power outage yet the quake and the wave knocked out the power but there are

a lot of ways the power can be knocked out besides natural disasters including snowstorms light rain just plain old human error so just because the peach bottom atomic plant isn't located on a fault line doesn't mean it's not susceptible to meltdown what happened at three mile island or a chair novel both human error in fact the only difference between what's going on right now in japan and what could happen in the united states is how our government would be able to treat those affected by the radiation this is where it gets really important here's the thing japan has universal health care so every single man woman and child in that country that is affected by this radiation will be able to just walk right into a doctor's office and receive treatment in the united states that were fifty million people are uninsured right now. that's not the case. and in pennsylvania specifically what i was just pointing out where that nuclear plant is which as we've discovered is facing an increased risk of nuclear plant failure the brand new

republican governor tom corbett is making sure more and more people in his state don't have access to critical health services should the unthinkable happened since taking office in january governor corbett as redirected two hundred twenty million dollars from state health insurance fund to as his office calls of economic development or as i call it tax cuts for millionaires and transnational corporations that money was part of a two hundred billion dollars settlement with tobacco companies who were found responsible for the high cost of health care to treat smokers and was by pennsylvania law mandated to this is a quote from the law fund the health of future generations of pennsylvania it's as a result of governor corbett decision to move this money instead to the millionaires and billionaires forty one thousand people lost their health insurance last week and another half

a million low income people who are waiting to be covered won't be able to get any insurance now and a lot of those people likely live in or around the peach bottom nuclear facility the one that has the g.e. mark one reactor so if it should blow up those people have to deal with radiation poisoning on their own sorry buddy just take a tylenol. the good news is governor's governor core of its actions didn't go unnoticed he and his republican cronies in the state are being sued by those who lost their health insurance but the same can't be said about other republican governors who have slashed their medicaid programs with impunity like jan brewer in arizona a state that also has a nuclear power plant and rick perry in texas who is threatening to drop out of the medicare program altogether throwing three and a half million people off the insurance roles texas has two nuclear power plants

and tokyo electric power company which runs the six nukes now near meltdown in japan is scheduled to build two more on texas' gulf coast with the hurricanes come you know so while what's going on in japan is unthinkable and tragic if it were to happen here it would be far worse because here for some insane reason we don't consider health care to be a basic right a pet republicans apparently don't give a damn about those who could fall ill near a nuclear power plant or frankly anywhere else for that matter unless their rich campaign don't you know it's time to have a national canned conversation not just about a new energy policy which we desperately need but about national health care maybe we should stop using the japanese model of nuclear power and start using their model of national health insurance. there is such a huge gap in this perception of healthcare as a right versus

a privilege it's really quite incredible when you think about it countries all over the you know france for example is famous for their all their nuclear power plants it not so much that people talk about the fact that they're dumping nuclear waste in english channel and showing up in the arctic still they've got a bunch of nuclear power plants what seventy percent i believe of their power comes from nuclear power they also have free health care for everybody in france so if france has an accident they don't have a problem if we have an accident we're screwed we've got to do something about that . as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website it's all part of an icon in archie dot com this terror show is available as a free podcast on i tunes also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash lovely picture arts and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there and get active in your it was sitting.

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